LOAN signings are part and parcel of the modern game, and Ronnie Wallwork is the latest in a long line to have turned out for Town.

But they didn’t catch on immediately after their introduction 40 years ago.

Indeed it was seven years before Town fielded a ‘borrowed’ player in a first-team game.

It was this weekend in 1974 that Southampton striker Ally MacLeod turned out for Town at Grimsby in what was then Division III (now League I).

The 23-year-old Glaswegian (who is not to be confused with the late former Scotland manager) was brought in by Bobby Collins in the wake of three straight defeats, and made an instant impact.

He scored the winner as Town came from behind to triumph 2-1 at Blundell Park.

It proved to be his only goal in four outings while at Leeds Road, but Town didn’t lose any of the games in which he was involved.

A prolific scorer for St Mirren for three years, he signed for Southampton in the close-season of 1973, but found his chances limited by the presence of Mick Channon and Peter Osgood.

He managed only three appearances in his 18 months with the Saints, who transferred him to Hibernian, where he again hit the net with regularity.

Incidentally, MacLeod, who saw out his career with stints at Stenhousemuir, Hamilton and Queen of the South, was hardly likely to have suffered the same fate as Danny Cadamarteri, who ended up being sent off after his over-exuberant goal celebration in Tuesday’s clash with Nottingham Forest.

Writing in the Edinburgh-based Scotsman newspaper earlier this year, Glenn Gibbons described the former Hibs favourite as “possibly the least emotive player in the history of the game”

Gibbons added: “On scoring a goal, MacLeod gave the impression somebody had just stolen his sweeties.

“Not so much as one arm would be raised as he turned and walked stoically away from his latest piece of magic, leaving his teammates to the celebratory leaping and hollering.

“In conversation at his home in East Kilbride one day, the question of his apparent dourness, even at the most intoxicating moment the game has to offer, elicited the response that he didn’t see the reason for any fuss, as if scoring the most exhilarating of goals was as peremptory an exercise as a clerk entering an item in a ledger.”